Storm of 1915 Altered Dundas Topography As Well As History

by Stan Nowak
This article was first published in the August 13, 2003 edition of the Dundas Star News. Reproduced with permission of the author.

The Town Dam strained against the incredible stress of the water in the basin, which was overflowing from the torrential downpour of the day before. Finally, the southern abutment of the dam gave way, and the headwater broke free and sped at a furious rate down Spencer Creek.

The dam had failed again. It had supplied power for the various mills located along Spencer Creek for 116 years. But, after that storm of August 3, 1915, after countless repairs following countless storms, the dam had failed for the last time.

The dam was first built in 1799, or perhaps earlier, across Spencer Creek just west of today's MacMurray Street, and was purchased and enlarged by Richard Hatt in 1804 for his Dundas Mills. After Hatt's death in 1819, the dam was utilized by James Bell Ewart, fortified again, and became known as Ewart's Dam until his death in 1853. In its heyday in the mid-1800s, it produced up to 200 hp a day for six to nine months of any given year. From 1853 to 1857, the dam was exploited by the various mill owners.

It got into a bad state of repair, however, and it became "the general opinion that the free flow of water made it impossible to keep bridge abutments on the stream, and there was quite an agitation for the town to take over the dam" (Dundas Star, August 5, 1915).

After yet another washout, the Town took over the dam in 1897. It became a white elephant for Dundas, costing a lot more than it was earning. From 1897 to 1915, the town spent $11,207.20 on maintaining the dam, while it earned roughly just over $300 per year, or $5,400 for the same time period.

With electricity becoming available at cheap rates, the dam fell into disuse. The Town, constantly debating what to do with the dam, had its problem solved when Mother Nature wiped it out for good, and it was never rebuilt.

The basin contained by the dam, though not an official recreation area, had provided Dundas residents with swimming in the summer, and ice-skating in the winter. It was in this basin that curling was first introduced in Dundas. Dundas Resident Elwood Hughes learned how to skate on the frozen basin and became a Canadian ice-skating champion and record holder around 1915–1920.

Soon after the final collapse of the dam, the demise of the basin followed, and Dundas' topography was altered forever. Today, the basin is filled in and the site is occupied by the Grightmire Arena, the Garstin Centre for the Arts, the Dundas Community Pool, and the parking lot that services them all. The Spencer Creek still flows by, just as it has for centuries.

There are, however, no remnants of what was once the mightiest dam on Spencer Creek.

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